I Became the Bully Extra in a Novel I Hate

Sable shifted in the chair.

"The fortress isn’t far," he said. "Half a day by carriage. Maybe less if the road hasn’t drifted over." He looked at the window. At the snow still coming down. "It sits on the northern hillside past the outer forest. Built into the rock face so it reads as natural formation from a distance. You’d pass it without knowing it was there if you didn’t know what to look for."

"Primary function," Solenne said.

"Stock site. Not production." Sable looked at his hands. "They don’t extract there. They hold there. Elves brought in from various points get consolidated at the fortress before being moved to the actual production location further out." He paused. "I don’t know where that is. I was never taken there since it’s a new production site, since the previous one has been raided already."

A beat

"But the fortress is where the numbers are. Biggest concentration of elves in the entire Creslan operation."

The room was quiet for a moment.

"How many," Arthur said.

Sable looked at him. "Last time I was transported through. Forty. Maybe more now." He said it the same way he said everything difficult. Evenly. The way you said things when you’d had a long time to get used to saying them and hated yourself for having gotten used to it. "Children mostly. A handful of adults."

Nobody moved.

Solenne stood at the table with both hands flat on it and looked at the document in front of her without reading it. Something behind her eyes was moving fast and controlled and arriving somewhere.

Then Sable opened his mouth.

"There’s a problem," he said.

Solenne looked at him.

"My disappearance." He held her gaze. "The Covenant runs a check rotation. Every contact point is expected to signal on a fixed schedule. If a signal doesn’t come, the assumption is compromise." He paused. "I’ve missed two signals already. The third is in approximately six hours."

The room absorbed that.

"When the third signal doesn’t come," Sable continued, "they don’t send someone to check. They evacuate." He said it simply. "Everything at the fortress. The elves, the stock, the personnel. Gone within the day. They’ve done it before. I’ve watched them do it." He looked at Solenne. "So if you’re waiting for your reinforcements. By the time they arrive you will not find anything at that fortress except empty rooms and cold stone."

Solenne looked at him for a long moment.

Then she straightened.

She crossed to the window and stood there with her back to the room and looked at the snow on Creslan’s rooftops and the grey winter sky above them and whatever calculation she was running she ran it quickly because she turned back around in under ten seconds.

"We move today," she said. "Within the hour."

Cael looked at her. "Our numbers—"

"Are what they are." Her voice didn’t shift. "And we have Sable’s intelligence on the layout and the rotation." She moved to the table and started rolling the document closed. "We have enough."

’She’s not wrong,’ Vexis said.

Arthur wasn’t sure if that made him feel better.

The room stayed quiet.

Solenne reached for a blank sheet of parchment and slid it across the table toward Sable.

Sable looked down at the floor.

We have to plan. We cant just go there blindly. Or we’ll get trapped again. Arthur said in his head.

’Right. But can we really trust this guy? Man is still suspicous. We can’t just accept his story’ Vexis said beside Arthur.

’But we have no choice Vexis. If we go what we have right now without this guy. Then it will take longer. More time for more eleven children to suffer in their hands.’ Arthur said while glancing at Vexis.

Vexis didn’t say anything.

The room stayed quiet.

Solenne reached for a blank sheet of parchment and slid it across the table toward Sable.

"Draw it."

Sable looked down at the parchment.

"The fortress," she said. "Everything you remember. Entrances. Corridors. Stairwells. Guard rooms. Holding cells. If you don’t remember dimensions, give me proportions."

He hesitated only a second before taking the charcoal.

The room fell into focused silence. Charcoal scratched across parchment while Sable rebuilt the fortress from memory. A rectangle became walls. Walls became corridors. A staircase. A service entrance on the eastern side. A larger northern gate. A lower level carved into the rock beneath the structure.

Arthur watched the layout emerge one line at a time.

"When I enter through the service entrance," Solenne said, "how long until I reach the holding cells?"

Sable didn’t stop drawing.

"Three minutes if nobody sees you. Five if you move cautiously."

"And if everything goes wrong?"

Sable finally looked up.

"The children are below ground. One staircase. No second exit." His finger tapped the sketch. "If they’re alerted before you reach this point, they’ll barricade the stairs."

Cael stepped closer to the table.

"Guard rotation?"

"Twelve on average. Four outside. Four inside. Four below. More if Soltice is visiting."

Veris studied the sketch.

"Blind spots."

"The eastern service corridor." Sable tapped another section. "The guards barely use it. Supplies come through there. Most traffic stays around the main hall."

Solenne’s eyes moved over the drawing once.

"Good."

Only then did she look back at Sable.

"The service entrance on the east face." A beat. "Can you get us through it?"

Sable looked at her. "You’re taking me."

"You know the layout. You know the rotation. You know what the inside looks like." She looked up. "Yes. I’m taking you." A beat. "With Thalon’s hand on your shoulder the entire way."

Sable looked at Thalon.

Thalon looked back at him with an expression that communicated nothing except that he was very good at his job and had been for a long time.

"Fine," Sable said.

The hour that followed moved fast.

Solenne gave instructions the way she did everything, efficiently and without repetition, and people moved in the wake of them without needing to be told twice. Thalon organized the carriages. Veris prepared what she needed in silence and with the economy of someone who had done field preparation before and had opinions about what was actually necessary. Cael disappeared for twenty minutes and came back with his coat changed and something additional at his belt that Arthur didn’t ask about.

Arthur found Theodore in the recovery room.

He was sitting up on the bed with Maya in his lap and his coat already on.

Arthur looked at him.

"No," Arthur said.

"I’m going." Theodore looked back at him. Not aggressive. Not emotional. Just certain, the specific certainty of someone who had made a decision while they were alone and had finished having the argument with themselves before anyone else arrived to have it with them. "I’ve been lying here doing nothing... I know what’s in that fortress. I’m not staying here."

"You just almost died Theo—"

"And the healer fixed it." He stood. Carefully, but he stood, and he stood straight. "I’m not at full capacity Vex. I know that. I’m not asking to be in the front of anything." He looked at Arthur. "But please.. I’m not staying here while you guys go there."

Arthur looked at him.

Maya sat in Theodore’s arms and looked at Arthur with her ember eyes and said nothing, which was somehow its own argument.

’He’s going to go whether you say yes or no,’ Vexis said. ’At least if you say yes he’s with you.’

Arthur looked at the ceiling briefly.

"You stay at the perimeter," he said. "You don’t go inside unless I say so. If things go wrong you pull back. You don’t argue about it."

Theodore nodded.

"I mean it, Theo."

"I know." He picked up his gloves from the bed. "I know you mean it."

The carriages were ready in the courtyard below.

Three of them. Dark paneled, no insignia, the kind of transport that moved through winter roads without advertising itself. The horses were heavy built and patient-looking, already fitted with cold weather gear across their flanks. Snow fell on them steadily and they stood in it without complaint.

The group assembled in the courtyard without ceremony. Thalon with Sable beside him, close enough that the proximity was its own statement. Veris with her satchel. Cael. Theodore with Maya settled on his shoulder and his breath coming out in white clouds in the cold. Roz on Arthur’s shoulder with his red eyes moving across the courtyard and the street beyond it and saying nothing.

Solenne came out last.

She was wearing a different coat than the one she’d had in the quarters. Heavier. Practical. The standard was gone from her belt, the cylinder collapsed and stored somewhere on her person, and what replaced it was the rapier at her hip sitting exactly where it always sat, like an extension of her rather than a weapon she was carrying.

She looked at the carriages. Then at the group.

"When we reach the fortress perimeter we stop the carriages at distance," she said. "No noise. No light. We approach on foot." She looked at the rest of them. "We go in for the elves. Everyone else is secondary. Our priority is getting them out. Clear?"

Nobody argued.

"Good." She moved to the first carriage and opened the door herself. "Get in."

The road north out of Creslan was empty.

Whatever traffic usually moved through the lower district had found better things to do in the weather and the carriages moved through the city’s edge and out through the southern gate and onto the open road without encountering anything except the snow and the wind and the flat grey sky pressing down on all of it.

Arthur sat across from Theodore in the second carriage with Roz between them on the bench and Vexis at the window watching the road behind them.

The wheels found the frozen ruts in the road and followed them north and the winter pressed against the carriage walls and came through the gaps at the seams and settled in the interior like a passenger that hadn’t been invited but wasn’t going to be removed.

Theodore had his hands in his lap and his eyes on the window and Maya tucked close against his neck. He hadn’t said much since the courtyard. Arthur hadn’t either. The thing about carriages on winter roads was that they gave you nothing to do except think and thinking was already happening without encouragement.

Arthur pushed his network out experimentally through the carriage floor. Felt the road beneath them.

The frozen ground. The shadows the trees threw across the road as the city fell away behind them and the outer forest began on both sides.

Fifty meters.

He pushed harder. Felt the blood thin at the edges and held it.

Sixty.

He breathed out. Let it settle at sixty and held it steady without forcing and felt the road ahead of them empty and dark and unoccupied for as far as the network reached.

’Rest it,’ Vexis said. ’You’ll need it at the fortress.’

Arthur released the push and let the network settle back to its natural range.

He looked at Theodore.

Theodore was still watching the window. The snow outside moved past the glass in the specific way snow moved when you were going somewhere through it, horizontal and purposeful rather than just falling.

"You good?" Arthur said.

Theodore glanced at him. Then back at the window.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "I’m good."

Arthur looked at the road ahead through the front window. The other carriages were dark shapes in the snow.

The horses moved steadily.

The winter pushed against everything equally and without preference and the road went north through the forest toward a hillside that looked like natural rock formation from a distance.

He adjusted his coat at the collar.

Last time they’d gone north out of Creslan they’d been following something.

This time they knew where they were going.

He looked at the snow coming down on the road ahead and felt the difference between those two things settle in his chest like something solid.

Not the ones being hunted.

Not anymore.